


burn scars (and other first steps)

by waveechocave



Category: Critical Role, Critical Role: Wildemount Campaign
Genre: Character Study, Free Verse, Gen, Introspection, Poetry, canon-typical trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-10
Updated: 2019-01-10
Packaged: 2019-10-07 20:36:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17372870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waveechocave/pseuds/waveechocave
Summary: Caleb has quite a past.Quite a past, and not much else.





	burn scars (and other first steps)

**Author's Note:**

> This is entirely set in Caleb's perspective and his outlook about his own life is obviously not healthy; I do not support nor advocate time-travel to hide from one's own mistakes.

Caleb knows ghosts are real.

-

Topography made nameless  
in imperial ink; all the right shapes,  
but hollowed and emptied—  
Here the birch-wood with  
initials carved into the tender bark.  
Here the running river, his ankles wet  
as he helped Mother with the washing-up.  
Here the flowering fields. Both his hands  
held, three friends warm under gold spring sun,  
finding blooms that match their eyes,  
each for each: chestnut, cornflower, silver.

-

The divot of a dimple mid-smile  
or the way a mouth forms around a syllable,  
an air-blown kiss, a name.  
Eleven years of shadow—  
eleven _years_ , and it eclipses so much.  
It eclipses so much  
and it leaves him so little.

-

There is a town that never stops burning.  
There is a fire that never goes out.

-

If you never live outside of your own head—

-

But he did get out. The smoke cloud  
spat him back onto the earth,  
squinting under the blinding sun.  
He found a name that didn't suit him  
and clothes that didn't suit anyone  
and built a new man out of dirt,  
the better to hide away with.  
He had only been taught   
to be golden and bright, a  
stage presence. A boot stepping  
on a broken wrist. A fire.

-

Buildings, once burned, leave skeletons like—  
like skeletons.   
Blackened and twisted.  
The frames bent out of shape,  
charred out of recognition and  
into anonymous tragedy, every one  
a little bit the same.  
Everything so different until it burns.

-

It is so expensive  
to be this poor.

Eventually he saves enough,  
his shoes stay together long enough,  
his stomach doesn't complain,  
he sleeps in stables—  
to get a book. 

Just one.

He is starting again and if he starts again small,  
so be it. So be it.

At least he is doing it on his own.

-

And then.

She is such a small one:  
Eyes like lanterns, teeth like knives,  
hands wound up in bandages  
just like his own.

They squint in the sun together,  
save coin in a pouch. Watch each other's backs.

If he doesn't see any scars  
on her fish-green skin, he learns fast  
that it is not because she has none.

-

All the while, news comes,  
in scrapes and slivers  
from overheard soldiers  
and underpaid messengers  
and anyone else he can beg it off of.  
_No_ , they say. _No. Never heard of it._

-

And still it burns.  
With no kindling left for the flame to catch,  
the skeleton houses sunken into the earth,  
with the children taken for the future  
and his own name given up to the past  
and _Blumenthal_  a nothing word.  
And still. And still it burns.  
And it is a fire that will never go out  
until he pulls the flames back into his hands.

-

 _Ja_ , Caleb knows ghosts are real;  
more and more of them every day.


End file.
